Detail of the display, from the LBJ library, under the 1964-1966 sign:

The model on the cover of Playboy looks kind of like Ann Margret, but it's Venita Wolf, She was a minor actress who lived from 1945 to 2014 — not too minor to have a Wikipedia article:

Venita Wolf... appeared in the Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos" (1967) as Yeoman Teresa Ross.

Other than that, she had only a short stint on popular television from 1966 to 1969, including guest roles in The Flying Nun, The Monkees, Gunsmoke and The Beverly Hillbillies, among others. She appeared unbilled in The Oscar (1966) but her only feature film credit was a supporting role in the beach movie Catalina Caper (1967)...

"The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" is a Tom Wolfe book from 1965. Here's its Wikipedia article:

Many versions of the book are headed by an incomplete quotation from Kurt Vonnegut: "Verdict: Excellent book by a genius." Vonnegut's full quotation was "Verdict: Excellent book by a genius who will do anything to get attention."

Speaking of orangeness, there's Tang. And that grand triad of mid-60s fun: the Spirograph, the Frisbee, and Operation.

But it caught my attention because I'm having my own trouble understanding what's wrong with a sex cult. People are allowed to enter into voluntary relationships in which they adopt a slave role, aren't they? The crimes are, we're told, sex trafficking and forced labor. The Post article doesn't work terribly hard at framing this as a crime (other than using the word "forced" and "made" (and note that what is "forced" is labor, not sex):

The actress first lured the women into the secret society within Nxivm known as “The Vow” — and cajoled them into providing “collateral” like embarrassing photos and statements to use as blackmail, federal prosecutors allege. She then allegedly groomed the slaves for sex with [Keith] Raniere — ordering them to adhere to extremely restrictive diets, refrain from removing their pubic hair, and to stay celibate, according to court documents. She also forced them to pose naked for photos — “including on one occasion close-up pictures of their vaginas” — which were given to Raniere and also used as collateral, the feds charge. Mack and other slave “masters” allegedly made their slaves participate in “readiness” drills, requiring them to respond to requests at any time of the day or night so they were “seriously sleep-deprived.”...

Raniere is the founder of NXIVM, which bills itself as a self-help and empowerment organization, but is described by authorities as a cultlike group whose members recruited women to be sex slaves, and branded their pubic regions with Raniere’s initials.... Mack, 35, is alleged by prosecutors to have recruited slaves for pay...

I think that means Mack got paid, not that the slaves were paid. Terrible writing.

... forcing the women to have sex with Raniere, and using explicit photos and damaging information to ensure their compliance.... “Mack and other … masters recruited … slaves by telling them that they were joining a women-only organization that would empower them and eradicate purported weaknesses the NVIVM curriculum taught were common in women,” prosecutors said. But “the victims were then exploited, both sexually and for their labor to the defendants’ benefit,” said U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue of the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

So the women voluntarily joined a female empowerment group and were persuaded to think that having sex with Raniere would eradicate their weakness?

I'm not approving of the Post cover or brushing off the significance of sex crimes. I'd just like to see the law explained. Was fraud charged? Rape?

"On Saturday, however, Mr. Kim abruptly announced he was retiring his signature policy, known as byungjin, or 'parallel advance.' The strategy has been at the center of his government’s propaganda and is enshrined in the charter of the governing Workers’ Party. But Mr. Kim said it was now time to adopt a 'new strategic line' and focus the nation’s resources on rebuilding its economy."

"Often, the companies ignored all the usual avenues of getting city approval to set up shop. And since the scooters are dockless, riders can just grab one, go a few blocks and leave it wherever they want, causing a commotion on sidewalks and scenes of scooters strewn across wheelchair ramps and in doorways. So officials in cities like San Francisco and Santa Monica, Calif., have been sending cease-and-desist notices and holding emergency meetings. Some even filed charges against the scooter companies. 'They just appeared,' said Mohammed Nuru, director of the San Francisco Public Works, which has been confiscating the scooters. 'I don’t know who comes up with these ideas or where these people come from.'"

We saw lots of Bird Rides scooters in Austin, Texas when we were there last week. It made me feel sorry for B-Cycles, which require a docking station to secure the bikes and human muscle power to make them go. Because the scooters are electrically powered, they are essentially self-locking. To make them go, you use your phone app.

I cannot believe prison rape remains a stock comic subject. Quite aside from the general problem of casual joking about rape, the prison rape topic is not only very stale — I've heard these jokes for 50 years — but it shows enthusiasm for punishing human beings convicted of crimes in a manner that extends beyond the legal sentence. It's laughing at the torture of persons held in captivity. When I hear Maher tell that joke, I picture him standing alongside Lynndie England and Charles Graner, grinning toothily and giving the thumbs-up sign.

I'm reading "It’s becoming clear that Trump won’t run in 2020" by Joe Scarborough. I mean, I'm reading the headline and laughing. It's on the most-read list at The Washington Post. It's what people want to read, and isn't that what fake news is all about, giving the people what they want (and getting them to want what you want them to want)?

Okay, now I've read the article for you. Isn't that what blogging is all about? I'll give you what I think is the most substantive paragraph in support of the proposition in the headline:

Now, even Trump’s most steadfast allies are quietly admitting that the Southern District of New York’s investigation poses an existential threat to his future, both politically and legally. Trump allies are telling the president his “fixer” could flip for the feds, just like Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. In Washington and across the country, Republicans are sensing the president is a wounded political figure, leading them to withhold their future support or — in one high-profile case — to challenge the president directly.

Allies are quietly admitting... Republicans are sensing... and Joe Scarborough is picking up the message. It seems to me Trump has faced vicious opposition all along, and he keeps winning in spite of/because of it. I remember believing — back in October 2016 — that Trump would drop out. I had a tag, Trump drops out....

I remember the days of annoying music-playing. I was a horrible offender myself when I was a teenager living with my parents. But headphones became the norm, and I wonder if people today even realize how much annoyance we are spared.

And yet TV rages on, filling the sound space of our homes and leaking out onto the neighbors. Where are the headphones? I know you can rig something up, and I have an old Roku with a headphone jack, but it's not the norm.

Here at Meadhouse, we have exactly one television and it's right next to where I work on my desktop computer. All of this is by choice. We could have more TVs, and I have another desktop computer in a distant room and a perfectly good laptop computer and many comfortable rooms where I could blog.

I'm not complaining, but I did have the occasion to wonder aloud this morning about why TVs don't have headphones. This led to a discussion of the Dylan line "You should be made to wear earphones," from the 7th (and last) verse of "Ballad of a Thin Man":

"... when the environmental movement—and hippies—burst onto the scene in America and the U.K. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, revealed the toll of pollution on the environment and laid the groundwork for a movement that coalesced into the establishment of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Terrariums were the physical embodiment of that movement: little shrines encapsulating the fragility of nature. These terrariums were mostly homemade, using a fishbowl or another sort of container that would have otherwise been discarded (a perfect example of what has come to be known as upcycling). Of course, terrariums were commodified, too. A company called Tiara Casa mass-produced a DIY terrarium kit—consisting of a large plastic globe atop a tall white stand—that became a fixture in many 1970s living rooms.... [T]he 1970s terrarium was a political statement."

Ugh! Remember those awful terrariums on a white pedestal? Here, you can buy one at Ebay:

That was emphatically not hippie style or "political statement" style. That was the kind of thing that made us hippies hate the modern look and want to take refuge in everything really old-fashioned looking (e.g., heavy dark oak furniture). The classic hippie terrarium would be made from the old aquarium where you used to try to keep your neon tetras and angelfish from dying.

"... are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will 'flip.' They use.... ....non-existent 'sources' and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if.... ....it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!"

"... and who self-righteously prided themselves on reporting everything to the nearest teacher they could every time? The kids who always seemed to end up 'in charge' of small-authority things like the A/V equipment, hall monitors, or street crossings, who immediately lorded their 'authority' when doing their 'jobs,' who invariably ended up wearing their 'uniforms' (vests or badges or whatever) literally everywhere they went, and who started virtually every sentence with, 'Well, as a hall monitor, I think...' If they never grow out of that attitude, they grow up to be James Comey."

Comey, whom Trump recently dubbed the “worst FBI director in history,” is a center-right believer in the innate goodness of America’s law enforcement institutions, and possesses the affable demeanor of a little league coach, or a generic provider-type leaning casually over a barbeque in an Old Navy commercial. If I were to write a script for a movie about the life of James Comey, which I would find unpleasant, it would include wholesome lines like “These brussels sprouts are delicious, Patrice,” and “Say hi to your mom and dad for me, kiddo.”

Shecet's point (of course) is that Trump is so awful that this kind of bland mediocrity seems attractive now, and that is very different from what the commenter expressed. The commenter's attitude is closer to mine, perhaps because I've been instinctively resisting anti-Trump hysteria. And also the idea that Comey "possesses [an] affable demeanor" does not resonate with me at all. I think he seems hostile and cranky but capable of maintaining a robotically calm game face.

"Arriving on chartered buses specializing in the transportation of 'Plain people' from areas such as Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Holmes County, Ohio, they rent modest bungalows and stay for weeks, or sometimes months, at a time. It’s vacation.... [W]ithout barns to raise or cows to milk or scrapple to prepare, the typically stringent rules of Anabaptist life are somewhat suspended in Pinecraft.... Earrings, usually forbidden, can be seen glittering from beneath white bonnets, and houses are outfitted with satellite dishes. Horses and buggies are nowhere to be seen, but adult-sized tricycles abound. Swimming, volleyball, and shuffleboard are encouraged; ice-cream cones are a nightly ritual."

1. The Amish, who seem to have pared down their lives to the essentials, still maintain a need to travel. Is it because travel is essential (in a way that applies to all or us) or because their lives are so restricted that they have a special need for periodic variation?

2. How do people who keep horses and cows ever leave their farm? Is it easier for the Amish, because there's a system of covering for each other when they take these Amish vacations? When I consider getting just one dog, I think of it making travel much more difficult (but perhaps that's because I'm pretty averse to travel, and I need to worry that if I added a strong anti-travel factor to my life, I'd never leave home).

3. The New Yorker doesn't seem to be looking down (or up) at the Amish. Maybe you'll disagree (assuming you can get to the photographs at this mostly subscription site). It's seems to be just a subject for photography. Look, this exists. Our camera is pointed at something you're not looking at. But maybe that's my subjectivity, looking at The New Yorker.

4. One of the benefits of limiting your life is that you preserve the potential to get great pleasure from things as simple adult-sized tricycles, swimming, volleyball, shuffleboard, and ice-cream cones.

Amy deserves credit for confessing. Because anyone who’s seen “Thank You for Smoking” knows the problem isn’t Aaron Eckhart’s language or behavior, it’s Katie Holmes’s ethics and tactics. I said it then, I’d say it again today. Oh, one more thing: she and [New York Times assistant managing editor Carolyn] Ryan should know this about my own book I’m currently writing: there are tapes. And unlike some, I don’t bluff.

I'm not someone who's seen "Thank You for Smoking," but I can understand Reines's defense and its limits. He used a line that, he wants us to see, expressed the idea: I thought we had a close relationship, and you're a bad person if you use our closeness in a way that hurts me.

The limits:

1. The movie reference would only work if he knew she was quite familiar with the movie. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe he did!

2. He's bringing up sexual intercourse metaphorically. That suggests a level of familiarity that might have existed. It might be used to intimidate a woman, but it might suggest that the woman was included in the group, more like a man, that she was in the "locker room" where sexual metaphor is freely used. It's possible that Chozick is repeating intimate talk to outsiders who don't understand the style of repartee, and her ew, gross is really quite unfair to Reines.

3. Why would the analogy work? She was a NYT reporter and he was a campaign aide. Even if Chozick achieved phenomenal access to the campaign, how could it possibly equate to his getting "inside" her? Does Reines mean to say that she tricked him into believing that she was a lover and not a real journalist and now it's wrong of her to reveal herself as someone who never really loved him?

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns—when the article or book appears—his hard lesson. ...

The catastrophe suffered by the subject is no simple matter of an unflattering likeness or a misrepresentation of his views; what pains him, what rankles and sometimes drives him to extremes of vengefulness, is the deception that has been practiced on him. On reading the article or book in question, he has to face the fact that the journalist—who seemed so friendly and sympathetic, so keen to understand him fully, so remarkably attuned to his vision of things—never had the slightest intention of collaborating with him on his story but always intended to write a story of his own. The disparity between what seems to be the intention of an interview as it is taking place and what it actually turns out to have been in aid of always comes as a shock to the subject.

5. I'm just going to guess that Reines is bullshitting, playing the faux naif today, even though back at the time he meant to flummox Chozick. As for Chozick, I think she's making a power move too. She must know how devastating it is in these #MeToo times to accuse a man of sexual harassment in the workplace, which is more or less what she is doing. I think Reines is scared, but he's trying to act tough — There are tapes! I don’t bluff! She's unethical! Like Katie Holmes!

6. I love the utter tininess of this dispute. It's so Friday. Such a relief from all the Comeosity.

"The multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court says that 'In the Trump campaign, Russia found a willing and active partner in this effort' to mount 'a brazen attack on American Democracy,' which included Russian infiltration of the Democratic Party computer network... The suit alleges claims that include conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, misappropriation of trade secrets, trespass and other violations of the law."

Now that there's a lawsuit, it's time to think about counterclaims. I'd like to see what the defendants would come up with using an equally aggressive, far-reaching approach to using the courts to promote your political cause.

The word "dox" came up in the comments, here, so I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which was useless in defining the present-day verb, but amusing on the subject of the old noun (click to enlarge):

"Not for mental health crises, not for graffiti on their buildings, not even for acts of violence. These churches believe the American police system, criticized for its impact especially on people of color, is such a problem that they should wash their hands of it entirely," The Mercury News Reports.

“Can this actually be reformed, when it was actually created for the unjust distribution of resources or to police black and brown bodies?” [volunteer leader Nichola] Torbett asked. For her and for her fellow church members, the answer is no – the police don’t just need reform. The police need to be abandoned altogether.

The churches call their drastic approach “divesting” from policing... The project of divesting is organized by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a nationwide organization that tries to get white Americans working on behalf of racial justice....

“It’s a challenging ask,” acknowledged the Rev. Anne Dunlap, a United Church of Christ minister who leads SURJ’s outreach to faith communities. “It’s a big ask to invite us, as white folks, to think differently about what safety means. Who do we rely on? What is safe? For whom? Should our safety be predicated on violence for other communities? And if not, what do we do if we’re confronted with a situation, because we are, as congregations? . . . How do we handle it if there’s a burglary? How do we handle it if there’s a situation of violence or abuse in the congregation?... In the case of interpersonal violence, for the survivors as well as the perpetrators, we want to look at transformative justice... Would a punitive police and legal system actually bring us the desired outcome for everyone involved? What are our actual values? What do our traditions teach us about redemption?”

No mention of the #MeToo movement, which seems to be on a collision course. In this light, notice Torbett's rhetoric about policing "black and brown bodies." Why "bodies"? It seems that women are being called to subordinate their bodies to the even more vulnerable bodies of men — more vulnerable because the violence they encounter comes from the government. And yet it is women who are quoted in the article — Nichola Torbett and Anne Dunlap. For many many years, women were discouraged from calling the police on their men. Are we circling back to that position? How can that be, given the intensity of #MeToo?

Here's a far-out theory, designed to test the credulity of nearly everyone, by Martha Ross in The Mercury News.

What if Donald Trump just quite simply loves Melania?

Perhaps the 71-year-old Trump was worried his wife Melania would hear these stories and think he had cheated on her.... At least that’s the story Trump reportedly tried to tell Comey in their now heavily scrutinized conversations... With regard to the “pee tape,” Comey wrote in his book: “It bothered (Trump) if there was ‘even a one-percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true.”...

During a February 8, 2017 conversation in the Oval Office, Comey recounted in one of his memos, Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that his country “had some of the most beautiful hookers in the world.”

But Trump also said that the “hookers thing is nonsense” and repeatedly told Comey he wanted the FBI to debunk the pee tape claim. His reason? Yes, Trump told Comey in a March 30, 2017 phone conversation that he was concerned that the “golden showers thing” would cast a “cloud” over his presidency. Trump insisted the claim wasn’t true, asking Comey: “Can you imagine me, hookers?”

Comey then writes in his book: “In an apparent play for my sympathy, (Trump) added that he has a beautiful wife and the whole thing has been very painful for her. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ ”...

Other evidence marshaled at the link, but I won't try your patience. Here, let's just have a quick vote:

Marquette suspended [John] McAdams after he wrote a blog attacking Cheryl Abbate, a graduate student and philosophy instructor, for telling students that everybody agrees with gay rights, and there was no reason to discuss it.

Abbate was confronted after class by a student who disagreed, and in a conversation he recorded, Abbate said the student didn't have a right to make homophobic comments in her class. The student then shared the recording with McAdams, who blogged about the exchange.

McAdams included a clickable link to her contact information and personal website, and Abbate began receiving negative, threatening emails. She has since left the university.

"This is not a case about free speech, it's about safety," Marquette attorney Ralph Weber told reporters after arguments. "You don't paint a target on the back of a student — put her out in front of a hostile audience so that she can receive vile and horrific threats — and claim that that is somehow consistent with your obligations as a professional."

McAdams was represented by Rick Esenberg, of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty President, who based his argument on academic freedom: "If academic freedom means anything at all, it has to mean that he can't be fired for writing that blog post." McAdams told what was apparently an accurate story and did not threaten Abbate. You can see that Marquette's lawyer is forced to talk about how the blog post could inspire others to threaten Abbate.

After the argument, McAdams said: "Well, three justices completely savaged Marquette's lawyer... However, I need more than three votes." And McAdams says he wants to return to teaching at Marquette: "Because while I have essentially zero respect for the people who are running the place, the students are pretty good." he said.

Marquette's attorney noted that McAdams was suspended by a unanimous vote of seven of his peers on the Marquette faculty. McAdams said a process like that would always work against conservatives like him because most professors are liberal.

The investigation into Prince's death has ended — there will be no criminal charges — and the file became public, including 100s of photographs of the strange enclave where he lived, worked, and died. The photographs, not lit for publicity purposes, make the place look very sad.

ADDED: Under the "wads of money," there's a CD, "The Best of Missing Persons." This is a band I don't remember, but Wikipedia says it was an L.A. band that combined new wave and hard rock. The singer (Dale Bozzio) was married to the drummer (Terry Bozzio) and they met while working with Frank Zappa in the 1970s.

Dale's quirky voice and heavy makeup made the band a favorite on MTV in the early 1980s. Her revealing outfits played a pivotal role in moving the culture of music videos towards that of overt sexual exhibitionism.

Let's listen (and look):

AND: The other CD — harder to read, because it's upside down — is The Chambers Brothers, "The Time Has Come." And the time had come for Prince. Lyrics:

Now the time has come (Time)
There's no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I've been loved and put aside (Time)
I've been crushed by tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)

"... including the salacious dossier detailing Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia and the investigation into Michael T. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, according to Mr. Comey’s closely guarded memos. The redacted and declassified memos — running 15 pages in total, and sent to Congress from the Justice Department on Thursday night — detail a series of phone calls and encounters between the two men in the months leading up to Mr. Comey’s firing.... The memos are exacting in their specificity, including details about who was sitting where, the precise times that conversations began and their durations. In some cases, Mr. Comey shared his accounts with others immediately afterward. These details add credibility to Mr. Comey’s account of events. Mr. Trump has disputed some parts, including asking Mr. Comey to shut down an investigation into Mr. Flynn.... The three Republican chairmen... issued a joint statement Thursday night [saying that w]hile Mr. Comey 'went to great lengths to set dining room scenes, discuss height requirements, describe the multiple times he felt complimented and myriad other extraneous facts, he never once mentioned the most relevant fact of all, which was whether he felt obstructed in his investigation'..."

There's also an interview with Comey on the NYT "Daily" podcast, which begins with Comey openly confessing to egomania (and stressing his conscious efforts to keep it under control). From Michael Barbaro's description of the interview:

I started the interview where Mr. Comey begins his book — actually before he begins his book, in the author’s note, with a strikingly candid observation about his own personality. “All people have flaws and I have many,” he wrote. “Some of mine, as you’ll discover in this book, are that I can be stubborn, prideful, overconfident and driven by ego.”

It seemed like his decision to itemize his own shortcomings before recounting his role in the investigation of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump over the past two years might be an acknowledgment that those flaws help explain his conduct. But Mr. Comey quickly rejected the idea that his ego had played a role in how he managed the investigation into Mr. Trump....

Mr. Comey said his ritual of writing memos about conversations with Mr. Trump began after a meeting inside Trump Tower on Jan. 6, 2017 — but not because Mr. Trump, then president-elect, had said something especially alarming. Instead, Mr. Comey said, from the very first moments of their relationship, he believed Mr. Trump could not be trusted.

From early on, the Clinton camp saw Trump as an enemy to encourage, Chozick writes.... “An agenda for an upcoming campaign meeting sent by [Campaign Manager] Robby Mook’s office asked, ‘How do we maximize Trump?’” Chozick writes, describing a time when the GOP primary was still crowded.

Even as Trump surged in the polls, the Clinton camp still saw him as a danger to stronger candidates rather than such a candidate in his own right, Chozick reports, so that in August 2015, “when the main GOP debate came on, everyone pushed their pizza crust aside and stared transfixed at the TV set… [Campaign Manager] Robby [Mook] salivated when the debate came back on and Trump started to speak. ‘Shhhhh,’ Robby said, practically pressing his nose up to the TV. ‘I’ve gahtz to get me some Trump.’ Robby thought Rubio would be the nominee. Podesta was bullish on Kasich. Bill and Hillary, still stuck in the 1990s, feared the Bush surname most of all.”...

April 19, 2018

Said Chuck Schumer, who is introducing a bill to decriminalize marijuana, as reported in Vice, which doesn't mention Trump's recent statements in support of getting the federal government out of the marijuana control business.

Photos from the Blanton Art Museum on the University of Texas Austin campus. The picture at the right in the first photo is Andy Warhol's portrait of Farrah Fawcett. In the second and third photo, the "Blue Woman in Black Chair" is by George Segal. The brownish squares on the right of the bottom photo is "Synecdoche" by Byron Kim. The painting all the way in the back in the first photo is "Painter and Loid Struggle for Soul Control" by Trenton Doyle Hancock.

Brilliant! So much to talk about. It's really a Borat-style stunt. I assume the barista isn't playing a role but spontaneously responding to Hotep Jesus's demand for "reparations" and embodying all the empathy she's learned to show, even as she's videoed doing something that must be a firing offense, handing out free coffee.

Yes, there is something wrong with making light of reparations, but that's what makes it funny. It's transgressive. I'll group this with the story of Randa Jarrar, who extracted dark humor from the death of Barbara Bush. Oh, no! Death is super-serious. Don't laugh at death!

These are the very things we should be laughing about — death, racism — not because they aren't serious but because they are.

"... Out of China’s population of 1.4 billion, there are nearly 34 million more males than females — the equivalent of almost the entire population of California, or Poland, who will never find wives and only rarely have sex. China’s official one-child policy, in effect from 1979 to 2015, was a huge factor in creating this imbalance, as millions of couples were determined that their child should be a son.... Among men, loneliness and depression are widespread. Villages are emptying out. Men are learning to cook and perform other chores long relegated to women.... Bachelors are furiously building houses in China to attract wives, and prices are soaring. But otherwise they are not spending, and that in turn fuels China’s huge trade surplus. In India, there is the opposite effect: Because brides are scarce, families are under less pressure to save for expensive dowries... Trafficking of brides is on the rise. Foreign women are being recruited and lured to China, effectively creating similar imbalances in China’s neighbors... With the increase in men has come a surge in sexual crime in India and concerns about a rise in other crimes in both countries. Harassment of schoolgirls in India has in some towns sparked an effort to push back — but at a cost of restricting them to more protected lives...."

While feminist art critics have for decades pointed out the shortcomings of the “male gaze,” the post-#MeToo reckoning with the art world’s systemic sexism, its finger-on-the-scale preference for male genius, has given that critique a newly powerful force. And the question of the moment has become: Is it still an artistically justifiable pursuit for a man to paint a naked woman?...

For emerging artists, there is the fear of a possibly career-derailing gestalt fail. “I’ve been in conversations with other [male artists], and they were just like, ‘I quit working with the figure. I’m only doing abstract work, because I don’t want to touch it,’ ” says Marty Schnapf while walking me through his recent solo show “Fissures in the Fold” at Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles. He thinks we could be living through “a new Victorian age”....

We're just looking for trouble these days, it seems. I was taught as a child not to react to attention-seekers because you'll only encourage them, and Jarrar's tweeted remarks on the death of Barbara Bush were, to me, the perfect example of the sort of thing you really ought to ignore. I ignored it yesterday, but I'm not going to ignore the failure to ignore, which I'm reading about in here, in WaPo.

Jarrar, whose area of expertise is creative writing, popped off a couple edgy tweets:

“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal”...

“I’m happy the witch is dead. can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeee.”

People got mad and actually incited the university to "review" Jarrar, who is a tenured professor. Lame. Jarrar apparently doesn't feel threatened, or so she tweets — "I will never be fired" and:

“You should tag my president @JosephlCastro. What I love about being an American professor is my right to free speech, and what I love about Fresno State is that I always feel protected and at home here,” Jarrar wrote. “GO BULLDOGS!”

On Wednesday, Castro told the Bee that Jarrar’s comments were “beyond free speech. This was disrespectful.”

What?! Freedom of speech excludes disrespect!??

“A professor with tenure does not have blanket protection to say and do what they wish,” he said. “We are all held accountable for our actions.”...

As the controversy swirled, Fresno City College said Jarrar had dropped out as the featured reader at an upcoming literary festival. Jarrar had been scheduled to headline Lit Hop on Saturday, but informed organizers this week that she was withdrawing, the college said.

“While we respect the right to free speech, even objectionable speech, Jarrar’s statements are her own and do not reflect the values of LitHop or Fresno City College,” the statement said. “We acknowledge the severity of her statements and take very seriously the concerns expressed throughout the community. The safety of each individual, including Jarrar’s, and all members of the LitHop and Fresno City College community is our paramount concern. We do not support violence or threats on social media or elsewhere; rather, we value civil discourse and look forward to the necessary healing ahead.”

From an "Ask Amy" letter (WaPo) by a woman who was flummoxed by the lack of blinds on her neighbors windows. The comments focus on that one sentence:

What is a sitting sexual position on a sofa? Could he just have been watching the playoffs?

And:

I do find amusing the indication that he was "sitting on the sofa in a sexual position." what could that even mean? Was he in "downward dog mode, or sporting a major erection? I wonder if they look over and wave when they see LW looking at them. Perhaps they are just into nudism. LW does not say they are having sex, just the husband watching TV naked.

What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past — as well as the police brutality and mass incarceration of the present — is the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time, in any place, for little reason — whether that means being kicked out of stores, suspended from school, priced out of their neighborhoods, locked up in jail or put in the grave....

Starbucks will do what it needs to do to protect its brand. But what is America doing to protect its own citizens of color?... And how can we up the social and legal costs for people who make life-threatening decisions by calling the police on peaceful black people?

There are over 900 comments, and I haven't read them all, but I have put them in the order of "most liked" and read a lot of them, and nobody seems even to acknowledge Attiah's idea. They're all back at the original Starbucks incident, picking into the merits of whether people can sit in the café without ordering anything. One of the most-liked comments is:

Oh my lord, give me a break already. Nobody has a right to plant themselves in a private establishment without even paying for a cup of coffee. The managers character has been unfairly denigrated, and by extension every Starbucks employee, and the cowardly response of ceo is to virtue signal. Want to hang around? Buy a bloody muffin. Stop blaming others for consequences of your actions.

The most-liked item responds to that:

For everyone flogging the “you don’t have the right to loiter” line, STARBUCKS says we do and these guys did. Starbucks says they routinely allow - even encourage - people to hang out at their stores. It’s part of their brand.

So STARBUCKS says these guys did nothing wrong and the manager inappropriately called the police. Why are you people so invested in blaming the black guys when the establishment whose side you’re taking IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE??

And the comments go on and on over this debate. I haven't encountered anyone dealing with what Attiah called "the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time" — that there's an insidious, pervasive system encompassing everything from murder to expensive real estate.

I reordered the comments to put the newest one first, and I did get something addressing Attiah's big reach. Somebody called all-comments-matter quotes Attiah's "What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past" for the purpose of decisively rejecting it:

Think rationally for a moment about the 2 things that Attiah is attempting to connect on some equivalent level...and tell me, honestly with a straight face, that you can take this seriously.

"... from senators opposed to his bid to be the nation’s top diplomat — a potentially important development as Pompeo tries to shore up at least some Democratic support for his confirmation vote," reports WaPo.

“I’m glad that there’s some preparatory work happening for this potential summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday morning on MSNBC. “I’m very worried that this summit is going to go very badly . . . but I think we should all admit that it’s good, not bad, that the Trump administration is trying to do some work ahead of this meeting, perhaps setting the stage for success rather than failure.”

“The preparation, certainly, is welcome — there’s no way that Donald Trump should go into that meeting without a lot of groundwork being laid,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said, also speaking on MSNBC. But, he added, as the current CIA director, “Pompeo is the wrong person to be engaging in diplomacy.”

"Grudging" is the right word. The OED defines it as "unwilling, reluctant; resentful, envying."

Kelly, who died in 2015 at age 92, was a master of geometry and color.... Kelly’s rainbow-bright Austin sanctuary contains elements familiar to a religious building, but its creator took some liberties. Three sets of geometric stained-glass windows splash color across the building’s cruciform layout. A totemic sculpture stands roughly where the altar ought to be. On the walls, fourteen black-and-white marble panels depict abstract interpretations of Christ’s road to Golgotha. Austin, according to [Carter Foster, the deputy director for curatorial affairs at the Blanton Museum of Art], is a study in devotional architecture that, like its creator, avoids specific religious commitment. “It’s a chapel in form but not in function,” Foster explains. “He’s referring to art history as much as any ideology.”...

[T]he artist set specific requirements for the building... it would be considered a work of art, not a religious building.... UT has no religious affiliation...

Look, if she were just making up a face, why would she make him absurdly, cartoonishly good looking? It seems like a schoolgirl's dream of the boy I'd like to meet. That makes it inherently implausible. Why would the handsomest guy in the world take on the work of being a random thug?And why would a rich man send out a really cute guy to scare a woman? Shouldn't he look more thuggish? But see, that's evidence that this is the real thing: You wouldn't make this up. Would you?

Like a scene from “Tom and Jerry,” workers fruitlessly tried to stomp on the agile rodent when it scurried from a hole in which dry ice had been dropped in an effort to control the furry pests. One worker even swung a shovel at the plucky rat in a comical whack-a-mole routine. But no one could lay a hand on the tiny animal, which dodged all the would-be rat-slayers at the Bushwick Houses and scampered to safety at a playground on Humboldt Street....

ADDED: I'm giving this the animal cruelty tag. The tone of the article is that it's just very funny, but bashing an animal with a shovel isn't a joke.

Lots of faculty in my department have things posted on their office doors. Today, I posted this, in response to, over the course of this semester, being called: Shannon, SHARON & today, Mrs. McGregor pic.twitter.com/vt7ShyZFXD

an important note to male profs: allowing students to address you by your first name makes ME the "other" who asks for my well-earned respect. Be a feminist ally: address all colleagues by their title(s) in front of students & ask students to address you the same way.

In my 30+ years of teaching law students, I think a student called me by my first name once or twice. It's not something I ever talked about, what to call me. I don't particularly know what the other professors did, but it was never an issue for me.

"A genre aggressively committed to singles, as opposed to the creaky album-and-tour model that rock stubbornly insists upon even at the indie level, hip-hop provides a running commentary on the culture as it happens — a musical newsfeed in real time. There’s a practical reason for this: While other musicians were whining about their paltry Spotify royalty checks and trying to monetize their fading careers, hip-hop artists gamed the Web in the 2010s and made it their bullhorn and promotional tool. For them, the Internet isn’t a distribution system, or worse, an evil force siphoning money from musicians; it’s their primary medium for artistic expression."

"The Republican Party is the agent of an ideological movement; most Republican politicians, activists and voters view their party as existing to advance the conservative cause. Because their goals of reducing the scope of government and reversing cultural change are difficult to achieve in practice, Republican officeholders are vulnerable to accusations of failing to uphold principles..... The Democratic Party, by contrast, is organized as a coalition of social groups. Democratic voters tend to view politics as an arena of intergroup competition rather than a battlefield for opposing philosophies, and the party is dominated by an array of discrete interests that choose candidates on the basis of demographic representation and capacity to deliver policy.... This year, Democratic candidates remain focused on challenging vulnerable Republican-held seats more than purging ideologically impure incumbents.... Liberal candidates and activists can succeed in pushing the Democratic Party to the left on specific issues. But they will do so by appealing to the interests and loyalties of social groups rather than engaging in broader ideological debates."

What he's saying about electoral politics rings true, and yet I also think it's true that it is the left that's looking for heretics and the right is looking for converts. That may not be a contradiction.

ADDED: I think I've figured out why it's not a contradiction. These are the 2 propositions: 1. The electoral success of the Democratic Party depends on maintaining a coalition of interests groups, and 2. Democratic Party partisans create pressure on each other not to get out of line. These ideas fit together well if you take their perspective: We need to stay united. It's not effective at winning converts, because there's no appealing idea to be understood and believed in. In fact, it's threatening to those who are outside of the group. These outsiders may insult the left by saying they are "looking for heretics," but the so-called "heretics" are only people in the group who undermine the adhesiveness of the group. The conservatives can "look for converts" because they do have some abstractions that seem appealing and coherent to ordinary people, and those people can feel burned when their representatives do various pragmatic things that deviate from the ideology.

April 17, 2018

ADDED: By giving this post a tag, I was able to click and see what I have said about Barbara Bush in the 14+ years of this blog.

First, January 23, 2016, I commented on this ad for Jeb Bush, which had Barbara Bush saying:

Jeb has been a very good father. A wonderful son. A hard worker; his heart is big.When push comes to shove people are going to realize Jeb has real solutions, rather than talking about how popular they are, how great they are. He's doing it because he sees a huge need and it's not being filled by anybody. Of all the people running, he seems to be the one who could solve the problems. I think he'll be a great president.

I said:

[This is] a pleasant enough ad for Jeb. Question who it works on. Trump's tweeted response is: "Just watched Jeb's ad where he desperately needed mommy to help him. Jeb --- mom can't help you with ISIS, the Chinese or with Putin." That will work on some people.

"Millions of taxpayers who waited until Tuesday to file their 2017 tax returns and make payments through the Internal Revenue Service’s website were thwarted by a systemwide computer outage that advised last-minute filers to 'Come back on Dec. 31, 9999,'" the NYT reports.

"It allows Trump and his defenders to paint Comey as disgruntled and self-serving. If Trump is a pig, Comey’s a prig. I wonder who comes out looking better to most Americans in that particular contest."

Gail: When there’s a choice about whether a politician or a lawman is going to get to play the hero, lawman usually wins. I suspect Comey will go down in history as the hero who stood up to a crazy president. Although in a fairer world he’d also be remembered as the guy whose overdramatic press conference got us said president in the first place.

1. I think "If Trump is a pig, Comey’s a prig" was a much spiffier and more obviously true line than "When there’s a choice about whether a politician or a lawman is going to get to play the hero, lawman usually wins," but I can see why the Collins quote was chosen to appeal to NYT readers.

2. As to "I suspect Comey will go down in history as the hero who stood up to a crazy president" — Comey himself explicitly rejected the notion that Trump is crazy. From the transcript of the ABC interview: "I don't buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia."

3. Where did Collins get the notion that in a showdown between a politician and a "lawman," "the lawman usually wins"? I'm getting a Western movies vibe from this image, what with "lawman." I've been in the law field myself for 40 years and "lawman" doesn't feel idiomatic to me as a way to refer to present-day law-enforcement personnel. In Western movies, though, I agree that the lawman usually wins. But in modern American life, politics and law interact in complex ways, and the law often leaves the answer to political choice.

4. I'm searching the NYT archive for "lawman," and I found the next most recent use and think it's something that may have influenced Collins. From "Best of Late Night":

In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, [James Comey] went into detail with a critique of Trump’s tan. Trevor Noah wondered aloud whether Comey could be undermining his own credibility.

“You see, now that’s funny, but that doesn’t sound like an impartial lawman. That sounds like a guy who got fired from White Castle talking trash about his old boss — that’s what it sounds like. It’s like, ‘Man, that dude smelled like onions before he got to work!’”

For decades, James B. Comey cultivated an image of purity as a lawman who stood above politics and politicians. Then came the book tour.

With the release of his memoir this week and a set of high-profile media interviews to publicize it, Mr. Comey... has veered onto risky terrain, shedding the trappings of a high-minded referee and looking instead like a combatant in the country’s partisan battles.

Mr. Comey’s description of the president as an unethical liar “morally unfit” for office; his call for voters to decide Mr. Trump’s fate at the ballot box in 2020; and even his observations about Mr. Trump’s appearance — his “orange” skin, his too-long ties, his hands — are stark departures from the law-enforcement mission of his old agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

If I go any further back in the NYT archive, I get the word in the Western sheriff context, so I'll just note that there seems to be a new tic, calling Comey the "lawman." Perhaps there's some ideation that the sheriff is in town or that Trump feels like the Wild West and needs taming.

5. There actually was a TV show "The Lawman" (1958-1962). I'm old enough to have an impression of that in my head. When I hear "lawman," I picture something like this:

And maybe that's what some people (including Comey?) would like to picture Comey doing to Trump.

Conviction for a crime of violence makes deportation "a virtual certainty" for an immigrant, no matter how long he has lived in the United States, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her opinion for the court.

The decision is a loss for President Donald Trump's administration, which has emphasized stricter enforcement of immigration law. In this case, President Barack Obama's administration took the same position in the Supreme Court in defense of the challenged provision.

What Gorsuch did seems like something Scalia would do.

ADDED: Here's the text of the opinion. Gorsuch has a concurring opinion. Let's read it. It's quite long, and no one joins him. He's concurring in part an concurring in the judgment. He begins:

Vague laws invite arbitrary power. Before the Revolu­tion, the crime of treason in English law was so capa­ciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. The founders cited the crown’s abuse of “pretended” crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution. See Declaration of Independence ¶21. Today’s vague laws may not be as invidious, but they can invite the exercise of arbitrary power all the same—by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing prosecutors and courts to make it up.

The law before us today is such a law. Before holding a lawful permanent resident alien like James Dimaya sub­ject to removal for having committed a crime, the Immi­gration and Nationality Act requires a judge to determine that the ordinary case of the alien’s crime of conviction involves a substantial risk that physical force may be used. But what does that mean? Just take the crime at issue in this case, California burglary, which applies to everyone from armed home intruders to door-to-door salesmen peddling shady products. How, on that vast spectrum, is anyone supposed to locate the ordinary case and say whether it includes a substantial risk of physical force? The truth is, no one knows. The law’s silence leaves judges to their intuitions and the people to their fate. In my judgment, the Constitution demands more.

In this passage, Gorsuch raises Scalia to trump Thomas:

These early cases, admittedly, often spoke in terms of construing vague laws strictly rather than declaring them void. See, e.g., post, at 4–5 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); John- son, 576 U. S., at ___–___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 8–10). But in substance void the law is often exactly what these courts did: rather than try to construe or in­terpret the statute before them, judges frequently held the law simply too vague to apply. Blackstone, for example, did not suggest the court in his illustration should have given a narrowing construction to the term “cattle,” but argued against giving it any effect at all. 1 Blackstone 88; see also Scalia, Assorted Canards of Contemporary Legal Analysis, 40 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 581, 582 (1989) (“I doubt . . . that any modern court would go to the lengths de­ scribed by Blackstone in its application of the rule that penal statutes are to be strictly construed”)...

Another history-based shot at Thomas:

Alternatively still, JUSTICE THOMAS suggests that, at least at the time of the founding, aliens present in this country may not have been understood as possessing any rights under the Due Process Clause. For support, he points to the Alien Friends Act of 1798. An Act Concern ing Aliens §1, 1 Stat. 571; post, at 6–12 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). But the Alien Friends Act—better known as the “Alien” part of the Alien and Sedition Acts—is one of the most notorious laws in our country’s history... [I]t was widely condemned as unconstitution­al by Madison and many others. It also went unenforced, may have cost the Federalist Party its existence, and lapsed a mere two years after its enactment. With this fuller view, it seems doubtful the Act tells us a great deal about aliens’ due process rights at the founding.

“She told me, ‘I’m thinking of ways I could fix this for you. She said, ‘I was a heavier girl and I have all the tricks up my sleeve,’” Ms. Martinez said....

The incident happened two weeks ago — Ms. Martinez’s initial tweet about the incident went viral — but the backlash is still going strong. On Monday, Ms. Martinez and some of her classmates held a silent protest in support of “the destigmitization of natural bodies.” Despite threats of disciplinary action, about 30 female students opted not to wear bras, and a number of students decorated their backpacks with Band-Aids in the shape of an X. One student wore a shirt that read, “Do my ni**ples offend you?” (The asterisks were hers.)...

In the case of Ms. Martinez, for example, the school is “foisting this notion that unrestrained breasts are sexual and likely to cause disruption and distract other students,” [said lawprof Meredith Harbach]. But this kind of messaging that targets young women — your skirt is too short, you look too sexy, you’re distracting the boys — “deflects any and all conversation about appropriate mutually respectful behavior in schools between boys and girls... Who is disrupted actually? It’s Lizzy. Whose learning experience is impacted?.... It doesn’t sound like other kids had a major disruption, but she sure did.”...

Meanwhile, women whose nipples don't show are getting injections to produce those "Kendall Jenner" bumps because they love the look. This amusing video was in the NY Post recently:

One explanation shows up repeatedly when parents recount the early days after receiving their child’s diagnosis. They feel a sense of loss because they no longer dream that their child will get married, go to college or start a family of their own one day — in other words, that they will not meet the conventional expectations for the perfect middle-class life....

Perhaps the question to ask is: Why do we have children at all? Most parents would agree that it is not only so that they can replicate a conventional arc of a successful middle-class life: college, marriage, real estate, grandchildren. If those are the reasons to abort fetuses with Down syndrome, they seem disappointing — they are either self-centered or empty in their narrow-minded conventionality....

Kaposy proceeds to embrace reproductive freedom and to put the right to choose in terms of choosing one's values. His last sentence is: "If you value acceptance, empathy and unconditional love, you, too, should welcome a child with Down syndrome into your life."

That idea goes beyond the simple problem of choosing (if you're a person who believes you have a choice) to give birth to a child you know has Down syndrome. There is also the more complicated and harder to perceive problem in a question that Kaposy asks but leaves mostly unexplored, "Why do we have children at all?"

Kaposy gives that question a pat send-off: "Most parents would agree that it is not only so that they can replicate a conventional arc of a successful middle-class life: college, marriage, real estate, grandchildren." What are "most parents" thinking when they decide (if they decide at all) to devote so much of their time and work and money to the human stranger that is their future baby? Isn't it something close to the replication of a conventional arc of a successful middle-class life? If it's "not only" that, it's because they want an even better life for that child, understood mostly in terms of worldly success.

Of course, the conventional idea of a successful middle-class life involves acceptance, empathy and unconditional love flowing from the parents toward the child and the child toward the parents, going on as long as any of them are alive. That too is self-centered and conventional — a kinder, gentler self-centered conventionality.

But you may not get what you're picturing, even when you believe you have a right to abort and choose to have that child. We don't look very critically at our mental picture of the unborn child, which is much more idealized when we aren't facing news that the child has a disability.